The chase stopped being a line and became a storm.
Jacob felt it in the way the sirens multiplied until they weren't a sound behind him so much as a moving wall of noise. He felt it in the way the air ahead seemed to flicker with reflected red-blue light, like the city itself was warning him that the net was closing.
The system's overlay stayed at the edge of his vision, calm and hungry, tallying.
CHASE: ACTIVE
HEAT: 4 (rising)
ACTIVE BOUNTY: $105,000
UNITS INVOLVED: INCREASING
AGGRESSION INDEX: HIGH
Jacob hated the way his body responded anyway.
His hands didn't shake now. They steadied. His breathing slowed. His mind narrowed into the clean, brutal language of speed.
He told himself it was survival.
He didn't admit how much of it was relief.
Behind him, the lead Crown Vic drove like it wanted to hit him more than it wanted to catch him. The second unit stayed wider, trying to anticipate, trying to trap him at the next junction. A third set of lights flashed at a cross street ahead—an attempted cut-off, timing-based, built on the assumption that Jacob would choose the obvious route.
Jacob didn't.
He never chose the obvious route when it mattered.
He took a hard right into a service road that barely counted as a street—paint faded, shoulders broken, chain-link fences squeezing it into a corridor. The BMW flowed through the turn without drama, tires humming instead of screaming, as if the car considered traction a courtesy rather than a limit.
The Crown Vic behind him tried to follow and immediately paid for its weight. Its front end dipped under braking, suspension rolling, tires complaining. It didn't lose him, but it bled distance.
Jacob didn't look back long enough to enjoy it.
He only listened.
He listened to the pitch of sirens. The spread between them. The slight delay that told him how far behind each unit was, and how committed they were.
He listened to the city too—how the streets changed texture under the tires, how the light pools shifted, where the shadows deepened.
He listened for one more engine.
Because he could feel Brian back there like a second pressure in the dark.
Brian had entered the chase like a man trying to catch an idea before it vanished, and Jacob had felt it immediately—not the lights, not the siren (Brian had none), but the way the Mitsubishi held a line that was too deliberate, too hungry.
Brian was close enough now that Jacob could see him in flashes: headlights at the far edge of his mirror, sometimes hidden behind a cruiser, sometimes reappearing like a stubborn thought.
Jacob's jaw tightened.
He didn't want Brian here.
Not because Brian could catch him.
Because Brian could see something.
And Jacob didn't know what Brian was seeing anymore—Wanted, the myth, the machine…
…or Jacob himself.
The road opened suddenly into a broader industrial artery, and the chase surged with it. The cruisers gained a little, using the straight to close distance. Jacob felt the familiar tug—accelerate, break the line, vanish.
He did.
The BMW's top end came alive like it always did, the engine note sharpening into a metallic snarl that sounded almost offended by the idea of being limited. The car pulled harder, longer, smoother than any of the police sedans could match.
The lead Crown Vic faded.
But the second unit was smarter. It didn't chase his taillights. It cut for intersections, trying to meet him at the next node.
Jacob saw the ambush a block early—headlights angled at a side street, a cruiser waiting, poised like a jaw.
He didn't slow.
He didn't panic.
He turned the problem into geometry.
He drifted slightly toward the centerline as if he were going to take the usual route, baiting the waiting cruiser into committing. The cruiser lunged, trying to block.
At the last second Jacob snapped left into a narrow cut-through—a half-hidden access lane that ran between two warehouses like an afterthought. The BMW slid into it with inches to spare.
The waiting cruiser overshot, brakes shrieking, forced to abort the block.
Jacob shot through the lane and burst out onto the next street like a ghost stepping out of a wall.
Behind him, the pursuing units had to choose: follow the impossible line, or lose him.
They chose to follow.
Their mistake.
Because that lane wasn't built for police cars. It was built for trucks and dumpsters and tight angles. A place where the BMW's discipline became a weapon.
Jacob made the next turn tighter than any sensible person would at that speed. The BMW held. A cruiser behind tried to match it and went wide, tires squealing as the heavy sedan fought its own momentum. It clipped a curb hard enough that sparks flashed beneath the chassis.
The radio chatter behind him turned frantic.
"—he's cutting through—watch your corners—"
Jacob didn't feel triumph.
He felt cold focus.
Because the chase wasn't just cops anymore.
Brian's Mitsubishi slid into view again at the edge of the chaos—threading between cruisers, holding a line too clean for a civilian, too stubborn for someone who was merely curious.
Jacob's stomach tightened.
Brian had chosen to join this.
And that meant Brian was either reckless… or desperate.
Jacob didn't know which was worse.
He widened the gap anyway.
He didn't just out-accelerate the cruisers—he out-thought the entire formation. He used their mass against them, their procedure against them, their aggression against them. He forced them into decisions where every option was bad.
And then he did the most dangerous thing:
He disappeared on purpose.
Not into a tunnel. Not behind an overpass.
Into a moment.
At a four-way intersection ahead, Jacob cut his headlights for two heartbeats and drifted into the shadow of a loading dock entrance—just enough to remove himself from the obvious line without fully stopping. The BMW rolled in silence, engine low, a predator holding its breath.
The cruisers blasted past the intersection, chasing the last known vector, sirens screaming as if volume could substitute for sight.
Brian—coming in behind—hesitated.
Just a fraction.
The Mitsubishi's headlights swept across the dock entrance, and for the briefest sliver of time, Jacob and Brian existed in the same frame.
Brian's face was lit by the pale glow of his dash and the streetlight outside. His expression was taut, eyes scanning, mind racing.
Jacob stayed still in the darkness, helmeted and invisible.
Brian almost caught him.
Almost.
Then Brian's headlights moved on, and he went after the cruisers, choosing momentum over certainty.
Jacob exhaled slowly, breath loud in the helmet.
He turned the BMW back into the street—opposite direction, wrong angle—and accelerated into a different artery entirely.
The chase broke.
Not ended yet—too many units, too much anger—but broken into confusion. The net lost cohesion. Sirens scattered, searching for a ghost that was no longer where the story said it should be.
The system chimed like a satisfied parasite.
FORMATION DISRUPTED
BONUS: +$15,000
Bounty Increased: $120,000
NOTE: Air unit inbound
Jacob's stomach sank.
Air.
Not again.
But then he heard it—rotor thump in the distance, closer than he wanted.
And it wasn't just one set.
Two helicopters swept in, their lights searching, one with the more aggressive, disciplined movement of police… the other with the smoother circling patience of media.
The news had found the myth again.
A spotlight cut across the street and caught motion—not Jacob's BMW, not yet, but the cluster of cruisers and a civilian Mitsubishi weaving near them with the kind of speed that looked like recklessness from above.
The news chopper's camera locked on.
A voice spilled out across the city through the late-night broadcast.
"…we're back live—yes, live again—what appears to be multiple vehicles involved—police units in pursuit—there's also what looks like a street racer—possibly attempting to keep pace—"
Brian.
From the sky, Brian didn't look like an undercover cop trying to observe.
He looked like another racer chasing the legend.
He looked like a man with something to prove.
And in the chaos of flashing lights, the news feed did what it always did: it simplified.
It made Brian part of the spectacle.
Down on the ground, elsewhere in the city, Dom and his crew heard about it fast.
Not from the news first.
From phone calls.
From a pager beep.
From someone's cousin who had a scanner and a big mouth.
They'd been winding down at Dom's place—some of them half asleep, some of them still awake, scattered across the driveway and living room like the night hadn't fully let go. A TV was on in the background, volume low, mostly ignored.
Until the screen flashed BREAKING again.
The helicopter feed appeared, grainy and jittery, showing a string of red-blue lights and—distinctly—a Mitsubishi pushing close enough to police units to look suicidal.
Letty sat up immediately, eyes narrowing. Leon muttered, "That's—"
Mia leaned forward, hand rising to her mouth.
Vince's head snapped toward the TV like a dog hearing a whistle.
Dom didn't speak at first. He just watched, face still, eyes sharp, reading the movement the way he read a driver's heartbeat.
"Is that Brian?" Mia whispered.
Vince scoffed instantly, eager. "Of course it's Brian. Look at him—trying to show off."
Mia shot him a look. "He's going to get hurt."
Letty's mouth tightened. "Or he's trying to prove he belongs."
Dom stayed quiet, gaze locked on the screen.
Because from Dom's perspective, the picture was simple:
Brian had shown up at his shop.
Brian had raced at his meet.
Brian had fought with Vince.
And now Brian was out there, in the middle of a police pursuit, driving hard enough to get filmed by a news helicopter.
It looked like ego.
It looked like a challenge.
It looked like a man trying to earn a place in their world by doing something dangerous and stupid and impressive.
Dom didn't see the badge in Brian's pocket.
He saw the driver.
He saw the choice.
Mia's voice came softer, worried. "Why would he do that?"
Vince grinned, mean. "Because he wants to be one of us."
Dom finally spoke, low.
"Or because he's chasing something."
Letty glanced at him. "Like what."
Dom's eyes stayed on the screen, on the way the Mitsubishi tried to stay in the orbit of the flashing lights. "Doesn't matter," Dom said. "He's in it now."
On the broadcast, the spotlight swung again, searching wider.
For a heartbeat it missed everything.
Then it caught the blue-and-silver BMW as it reappeared on a parallel street—moving like it had been there all along, carving through darkness with smooth, terrifying certainty.
The anchor's voice jumped with adrenaline.
"—there! There! That appears to be the suspect vehicle—the blue-and-silver BMW—this is believed to be 'Wanted'—"
The myth was back in frame.
The city's pulse spiked.
The cops pivoted.
And Brian—already committed, already too deep—swerved hard toward the new vector, chasing again as if the ghost had personally insulted him.
Dom watched the screen and exhaled slowly through his nose.
Mia's eyes were wide, fixed on the footage.
Vince's smile sharpened.
Letty leaned forward, hungry for the truth.
And Jacob—helmeted, unseen behind the visor—felt the spotlight find him again and knew, with a cold, personal certainty:
He wasn't just running from the police tonight.
He was running from the consequences of being watched—by the city, by the news, by Dom's world…
…and now, by Brian, who was chasing him like proving something mattered more than staying alive.
..
The moment the helicopter camera caught the blue-and-silver BMW again, Dom's living room stopped being a living room.
It became a war room made of beer bottles and breath held too long.
The TV's glow painted everyone's faces in washed-out color—Mia's eyes wide, Letty's jaw tight with that dangerous kind of excitement that wasn't excitement at all, Vince leaning forward like he'd been waiting for the world to confirm his suspicions, Leon and Jesse half-standing like they could step through the screen if they needed to.
And Dom—Dom watched like he was listening to an engine through a wall.
He didn't look at the flashing lights. He looked at the line.
On screen, Wanted wasn't just escaping.
Wanted was hunting the road.
The BMW cut through an intersection so tight it made the camera operator swear. It slid between two cars like it knew they'd move before they did. It took a corner in a way that wasn't showboating—it was punishment, like the driver was making the street obey.
Mia's voice came small and strained. "He's… he's driving different."
Letty didn't take her eyes off the screen. "He's pissed."
Vince scoffed, but there was a crack of uncertainty in it now. "Or he's crazy."
Dom's mouth tightened. "That ain't crazy," he said quietly. "That's anger."
Because Dom could see it—the way the BMW stopped simply avoiding contact and started using the city like a weapon. The way it baited cruisers into committing too hard, then punished the commitment. The way it held a line that didn't flinch even when the police got close enough to touch.
It looked personal.
And somewhere out there, beneath the black helmet, a human being was getting pulled toward a place Dom recognized too well: the place where you stopped thinking about consequences and started thinking about survival like it was a right you had to take with your teeth.
The broadcast audio crackled with breathless commentary.
"—this is extremely dangerous—units appear to be attempting a containment maneuver—"
The camera zoomed out slightly, catching the geometry of the trap ahead: two cruisers angling to choke the street, another unit racing in from the far end of the block.
A head-on intercept.
Dom's shoulders went rigid.
Mia's hand flew to her mouth. "No—"
Even Vince stopped grinning.
On screen, the oncoming police car—a Crown Vic—committed to the wrong kind of bravery. It swung into the lane fully, nose pointed straight at the BMW, roof lights strobing like a heartbeat that had gone feral.
For a second, it looked like the cruiser was daring the myth to be mortal.
The spotlight pinned them both, turning the street into a stage and the collision into an inevitability the whole country could watch.
In the BMW, Jacob felt the decision before he could see it clearly.
The street opened into a straight, and the world ahead suddenly contained a wall of headlights and red-blue flashes moving toward him. Not angled for a block. Not trying to box.
Trying to end it.
His stomach dropped so hard it felt like falling.
He could have vanished—could have cut into shadow and left the cruisers chasing ghosts again. He knew routes. He knew holes.
But there was no time for clever.
Not at this distance.
Not at this closing speed.
Jacob's hands tightened on the wheel until the gloves creaked. His breath went thin in the helmet. He saw the cruiser's grille grow larger—too fast—saw the officer's silhouette behind the windshield, saw the moment the decision became a fact.
They're going to hit me.
A hot, ugly thing surged up in Jacob—rage, yes, but also betrayal. He hadn't asked to be a legend. He hadn't asked to be chased like an animal. He hadn't asked to be turned into a public spectacle and then punished for existing.
He triggered Speedbreaker—not because he wanted to show off, but because his body refused to die without trying.
Time thickened.
The world slowed into a heavy, intimate horror.
The cruiser's nose crept toward him like a train in molasses. The BMW's hood vibrated under the wind. Dust and small debris hung in the air, lit by the strobing police lights.
Jacob's mind went terrifyingly calm.
There were options—few, brutal, all bad.
A swerve right risked a civilian car entering the lane. A swerve left risked clipping the cruiser's corner and spinning. Braking at this speed would still mean impact, just with different math.
He chose the only line that kept the impact from becoming a slaughter.
He straightened.
Not surrender.
Control.
He tightened his grip, centered the BMW, and prepared to take the hit in the most stable configuration possible—nose forward, chassis braced, wheels straight—like a driver bracing for a wall on a track.
He released Speedbreaker.
Time snapped back to full violence.
The collision happened like a thunderclap.
Metal screamed.
Headlights shattered into white fragments.
The sound hit the broadcast microphones as a raw, sickening crunch that made everyone watching flinch—on couches, in bars, in police stations, in Dom Toretto's living room.
Mia screamed.
Letty stood up so fast her chair scraped.
Dom didn't move—he went still, the way men went still when something they couldn't control finally did the worst thing.
On screen, the BMW and the cruiser met in a full, brutal head-on. The Crown Vic's front end crumpled like paper. The BMW's hood bucked, the body lurching violently, and both vehicles spun apart in a shower of sparks and debris.
The BMW skidded sideways, slammed hard into the curb, and stopped at an angle that looked wrong—too still, too final.
For a heartbeat, the whole chase seemed to freeze around it.
Then panic surged in.
Civilians screamed and backed away. A few cars braked and swerved around the wreckage, horns blaring. Police units flooded in from every direction, sirens stacking into an unbearable wail.
Doors flew open.
Officers poured out with weapons drawn.
The TV camera caught it all in jittery, zoomed-in chaos: cops forming a rough circle around the BMW and the crushed cruiser, shouting commands the microphones couldn't fully pick up, hands steady on pistols as if the car might bite.
Because the car wasn't just a car anymore.
Not to them.
It was a myth with teeth.
In the BMW, Jacob's world became pain and ringing.
The helmet snapped his head back against the seat. The harness bit into his chest. His vision flashed white, then dark, then returned in flickers as if reality itself had to reboot.
He tasted blood.
Not a dramatic mouthful—just the sharp metallic tang of a bitten tongue.
His hands shook on the wheel, not from fear now, but from shock. He tried to breathe and realized he was breathing too fast, shallow, like his ribs had forgotten how to expand.
Outside, voices screamed.
"Hands! Show me your hands!"
"Don't move!"
"Driver! Out of the vehicle!"
Jacob stared at the shattered windshield, at spiderweb cracks lit by strobing light. He couldn't see much. He could only feel the night pressing in, full of guns and anger and the kind of fear that made people shoot first because the story demanded an ending.
In Dom's living room, the same fear moved like electricity through everyone.
Jesse whispered, "He's dead."
Leon shook his head slowly, like he didn't want to believe he'd just watched a man die on live TV.
Mia's hands were pressed to her mouth, eyes shining with tears she didn't want anyone to see. "Oh my God…"
Vince's voice came tight, almost triumphant despite the horror. "That's what happens."
Letty's gaze stayed locked on the screen, expression hard. "Shut up."
Dom didn't speak. His face looked carved out of stone. But his eyes—his eyes were alive with a grim understanding: this was what crackdowns looked like. This was what happens when the city decided a myth needed to be made mortal.
On the broadcast, an officer stepped closer to the BMW's driver-side door, weapon leveled, shouting again.
The car didn't move.
Smoke rose from the hood in thin, pale curls.
The scene looked done.
Final.
Then the impossible happened.
The BMW twitched.
Just a shudder at first, like a dying animal's reflex.
A few officers flinched back instinctively, guns tightening. Someone shouted, louder, panicked.
"Back! Back!"
The TV camera zoomed hard, the image turning grainy, desperate to capture the moment.
The BMW's engine coughed once—a wet, mechanical stutter that sounded like it had swallowed gravel.
Then it coughed again.
And then, to the shock of everyone watching, the car sprang to life.
Not smoothly. Not politely.
It ignited with a violent, angry roar—an engine note that rose like something waking up furious that it had been forced to sleep. The headlights flickered—one dead, one weak—then steadied enough to cast a crooked beam across the officers' legs.
The cops staggered back in fear, weapons still trained, shouting over each other now.
"Get down!"
"Driver's still in there!"
"Shots—hold—HOLD—"
On screen, the BMW's front end looked wrong—cracked, scarred, angry—but it was alive. It rocked slightly as Jacob's foot found the pedal and the drivetrain answered like a beast refusing to die.
In the helmet, Jacob's breath turned ragged.
He wasn't thinking about money.
He wasn't thinking about myth.
He was thinking one raw, personal thought that burned through the pain:
You tried to kill me.
His hands—shaking, bleeding slightly at the knuckles—tightened on the wheel.
The system's HUD pulsed at the edge of his vision, cool and satisfied.
CRITICAL IMPACT SURVIVED
DURABILITY TRAIT: CONFIRMED (HIGH)
Bounty Increased: $150,000
HEAT: 5
NOTE: Police fear response escalating
Jacob didn't read the numbers.
He felt them.
He felt the car's anger mirror his own.
Outside, guns pointed at him. Voices screamed. The city held its breath.
On the TV, Dom's entire crew stared at the screen like they were watching a ghost crawl out of a grave.
Mia whispered, voice shaking, "He's… he's still moving."
Letty's eyes glittered with something dangerous. "That ain't a ghost," she said softly. "That's a monster."
Dom finally spoke, low and steady, the words landing like a vow.
"That's not supposed to happen," Dom said.
And as the BMW revved again—louder, angrier—its broken body insisting on life, Jacob Cooper felt the last thin thread of "careful" snap inside him.
He wasn't running from cops anymore.
He was running from execution.
And the city was about to learn the difference.
...
The circle of guns tightened.
Floodlights and headlights and helicopter beams turned the street into a harsh, overexposed stage. Smoke drifted from the BMW's buckled hood in thin, pale ribbons. The Crown Vic it had hit sat crumpled nearby, its front end folded inward like a mouth smashed shut.
Officers shouted overlapping commands—too many voices, too much fear.
"Hands up!"
"Driver, out of the car!"
"Don't move!"
Jacob heard all of it through the muffling of his helmet and the ringing in his skull, but the words didn't land as language anymore. They landed as threat. As the promise of a bullet the moment someone's finger twitched wrong.
His windshield was spiderwebbed. The driver-side window had blown out. Cold air poured into the cabin carrying siren noise and the sharp stink of airbags and hot coolant.
His hands shook on the wheel.
Not from indecision.
From restraint.
Because something inside him—something he'd been trying to keep buried under "Jacob Cooper," under polite smiles, under the idea that he could be normal—had begun to claw its way to the surface when the cruiser chose to ram him head-on.
They tried to kill me.
The BMW idled like an angry animal, uneven but alive, its engine note climbing and falling in rough breaths.
Then an officer rushed the driver-side door.
It happened fast—too fast for the other cops to stop him, too fast for the crowd to understand what they were seeing until it was already done. He moved with adrenaline courage: weapon up, body angled, shouting as he closed the distance.
On the live broadcast, the cameraman zoomed instinctively, hungry for the moment the myth became a man in cuffs.
Dom's living room held its breath.
Mia's hands were still pressed to her mouth. Letty leaned forward like she couldn't help herself. Vince's eyes were wide, gleaming with the kind of excitement that came from watching someone else lose.
In the BMW, Jacob's vision narrowed into a tunnel: the officer's arm, the gun, the dark hole of the barrel aimed into his shattered window.
Jacob's body moved before thought could form into a sentence.
His left hand shot out through the broken window and closed around the weapon with a grip that wasn't careful. It was reflex. It was survival made physical.
The officer jerked back in shock, trying to wrench the gun free.
Jacob didn't let go.
He pulled.
The motion was brutal, desperate, ugly—Jacob yanking the officer forward, dragging him into the jagged edge of the window frame with a sickening thud of impact and glass. The officer's head and shoulder slammed against the door, his shout turning into a choked burst of pain and panic.
For half a second, the entire street froze.
Even the cops seemed stunned, as if the myth had just reached out and touched reality.
Then chaos detonated.
"GET BACK!"
"TASER—TASER—!"
"DROP IT!"
Another officer lunged in from the passenger side with a baton. Someone else grabbed the downed officer by the vest, hauling him away as Jacob's hand still clamped the gun like it was the only anchor left in the world.
A crackle snapped through the night.
Jacob's body jolted as electricity hit him—his muscles locking, teeth clenching, arms spasming in violent, involuntary tremors. The gun slipped from his fingers. His shoulder slammed back into the seat.
More officers piled in, shouting, swearing, yanking at the door handle.
For a heartbeat it looked like they might actually pull him out.
For a heartbeat it looked like the legend might end in a dogpile and cuffs.
And that was the moment restraint finally died.
Not because Jacob wanted to hurt anyone.
Because terror and pain and humiliation and betrayal fused into a single, hot, blinding thing.
The BMW's engine screamed as his foot hit the throttle without finesse. The car lurched forward with a savage jerk, tires spitting rubber, the front end scraping, sparks flashing under the damaged bumper.
Officers stumbled back, shouting.
One fell hard onto the asphalt, rolling away as the BMW's rear end swung out slightly, correcting itself like it refused to let Jacob lose control even now.
On the broadcast, the anchor's voice went high with disbelief. "—oh my God—he's moving—he's MOVING—"
Dom's living room erupted in a chorus of shocked noise.
Mia whispered, shaking, "Stop—stop—"
Letty's voice was low, almost reverent with horror. "He's not done."
Dom's face looked carved out of stone. "He's snapped," he said quietly.
Because the way the BMW moved now wasn't the clean, disciplined ghost from the first chase.
This was something wounded.
Angry.
A cornered animal that had learned the world wanted it dead.
Police units surged forward to reengage—Crown Vics and a couple of heavier cruisers piling into the lane, trying to box him, trying to pin him before he could reach open road.
Jacob didn't run away from them the way he had before.
He met them.
The first cruiser tried to angle into his flank—classic pursuit geometry, trying to push the BMW into a spin.
Jacob answered with the BMW's rear bumper.
He didn't swerve wildly. He didn't play it like a stunt.
He drove like the street had become a narrow hallway and the only way through was force.
The BMW slammed bumper-to-bumper into the cruiser's front corner with a crunch of metal and an explosion of sparks. The impact jolted through Jacob's spine. The cruiser's nose snapped sideways. Tires squealed. The heavy sedan fishtailed and barely recovered.
The crowd on sidewalks—on-lookers drawn by sirens and helicopters—backed away in a wave of panic. People screamed. Someone dropped to the ground, hands over their head. Car alarms began to chirp and wail as bodies and metal moved too close.
Jacob's helmeted head barely moved. His hands stayed locked on the wheel like it was fused to his bones.
Another cruiser came in from the other side, trying to close the corridor.
Jacob clipped it too—rear quarter to front bumper—hard enough to jolt it off line, not hard enough to flip it. The BMW's durability was obscene, an unnatural refusal to crumple the way a street car should. The police cars, built for abuse but not for this, began to deform—bumpers cracking, fenders folding, tires rubbing against bent wheel wells.
It looked like vehicular warfare because it was.
No longer a chase.
A collision of wills.
And the city watched it in real time, helpless.
On TV screens, viewers saw police cars trying to contain a suspect… and then being shoved aside like toys. They saw officers backing away with weapons drawn and then scrambling to get back into cars because the target wasn't stopping. They heard the anchor's voice falter on air, unable to keep the performance steady.
"This is—this is unprecedented—"
In Dom's living room, nobody spoke for a long moment.
They just watched the BMW throw itself through the net.
Mia's face was wet now. Tears she didn't remember letting go. "That's… that's not racing," she said, voice breaking.
Dom didn't answer immediately.
His jaw worked once, like he was grinding down an emotion that didn't have a safe place to go.
"That's survival," he said finally, and it sounded like a condemnation and an understanding at the same time.
Letty's eyes stayed glued to the screen. "Or it's revenge."
Vince whispered, almost excited, "He's gonna kill somebody."
And that was the fear that spread fastest—faster than the BMW, faster than the helicopters, faster than the story.
Because now the myth wasn't just a ghost.
It was a threat that could shove police cars out of the way.
It was something that refused to die on camera.
Jacob felt none of the broadcast's awe. None of the crowd's terror. None of the city's growing mythology.
He felt only pain and heat and the memory of headlights coming at him head-on like an executioner.
He felt the system's HUD flicker at the edge of his vision, numbers climbing like it was counting calories.
He didn't read them.
He didn't care.
He drove like every impact was an argument with the world:
You don't get to end me.
And as the BMW tore forward—scarred, smoking, alive with furious motion—Los Angeles learned a new kind of panic:
Not the panic of watching a man run.
The panic of watching a myth fight back.
....
The chase stopped resembling anything that belonged to Los Angeles.
It stopped resembling law enforcement, too.
It became a Need for Speed chase in the purest, ugliest sense—momentum as religion, collateral as fog, the city reduced to a playground of hard edges and fragile things.
Jacob drove like the world had finally admitted what it wanted from him.
Not surrender.
Not an apology.
A spectacle.
The BMW—scarred, smoking, front end buckled in ways that should've killed it—kept moving like pain was fuel. Its engine didn't sound healthy anymore. It sounded furious. A grinding, animal howl rising and falling as Jacob squeezed throttle through shock and rage, hands welded to the wheel, body locked into the seat by more than a belt.
He didn't feel like he was escaping.
He felt like he was breaking through.
The system knew it, too.
The HUD swam at the edge of his vision—bright in a way that felt predatory.
MOST WANTED PROTOCOL: ENGAGED
HEAT:5
CITY ALERT: MAXIMUM
PURSUIT BREAKERS: ACTIVE (ENVIRONMENTAL)
WARNING: LETHAL FORCE PROBABILITY INCREASING
Jacob didn't read it cleanly. His eyes were shaking. His skull rang. But the words Most Wanted hit him anyway, like the system was naming what he'd become.
A myth had rules.
A myth had a soundtrack.
A myth had an ending the crowd wanted.
The police tried to force that ending.
More units poured in—older black-and-whites, Crown Vics, heavier interceptors—forming a moving knot of lights and mass that tried to clamp around him at the next corridor. Sirens shredded the air. Commands barked over radios with a sharpness that wasn't about procedure anymore—it was about fear.
In living rooms across the country, the broadcast returned to full, breathless chaos.
"—we are watching an escalating incident—police attempting to contain the suspect—"
The camera shook as the helicopter banked. The spotlight pinned the BMW again, turning it into a bright, impossible wound on the road.
And everyone watching saw it: the car should have been dead.
It wasn't.
Jacob hit the first barrier like it was paper.
A temporary construction barricade, orange-striped, plastic and metal, meant to guide traffic like a suggestion. He didn't swerve around it. He didn't hesitate.
He went through.
It exploded into shards and skittering debris, pieces ricocheting off the BMW's underside. The car bucked once, suspension complaining, then settled again—still running, still pulling, still angry.
Behind him, a cruiser clipped the debris and fishtailed, tires screaming as it tried to regain control. The road became chaos, and the police line fractured.
Jacob didn't look back.
He felt the fracture in the sirens, in the widening gaps, in the way the pressure behind him stuttered for half a heartbeat.
He took that heartbeat and made it a weapon.
He turned into a corridor of concrete and steel—an underpass throat where the sound multiplied until it felt like the city was screaming with him. He aimed for a narrow opening between a support pillar and a parked truck, a gap that looked like a mistake in urban planning.
He hit it clean.
The BMW's mirror scraped with a shriek of metal, sparks spraying in a bright fan. Jacob didn't flinch. The car kept going, and the sparks trailed behind him like a comet tail.
On the broadcast, people gasped.
In Dom's house, the room had filled again—everyone dragged back by the TV like gravity. Beer bottles forgotten. Sleep abandoned. Mia sat forward, rigid, eyes wide. Letty stood, arms crossed tight, jaw locked. Vince looked sickly thrilled. Dom didn't move at all, except for the tightening of his fist around the neck of a bottle.
"That's not… human," Leon muttered, voice hushed like a prayer.
Dom's eyes stayed on the screen. "He is," Dom said quietly.
His voice held no comfort.
Only certainty.
Because Dom could see what nobody else on the broadcast could: the way the BMW moved wasn't just skill. It was intention sharpened into a blade. It was a man who had been pushed past the point where fear made you careful and into the place where fear made you fatal.
Jacob punched out of the underpass and found open air.
An elevated stretch—guardrails, concrete dividers, the city dropping away to one side. The road ahead narrowed with construction—temporary walls and lane shifts that were meant to slow traffic, control flow, keep people safe.
Safe.
Jacob laughed once inside the helmet, a broken sound.
The BMW hit the divider at an angle—hard enough to jolt his shoulder, hard enough to throw the rear end sideways. Instead of spinning, the car rode it. Rubber and metal screaming. The divider fractured, chunks breaking free.
Jacob used the broken geometry like a ramp.
The BMW launched.
Not a clean cinematic jump—an ugly, violent hop over a shattered barrier, suspension bottoming out as it cleared the break and dropped into the next section of road with a thunderous slam. The impact would've snapped lesser cars in half.
The M3 GTR absorbed it like it hated the ground for daring to be there.
Behind him, the police tried to follow. A cruiser hit the broken barrier wrong and blew a tire. Another braked too late and slammed into the first, bumper folding. Lights tangled. Sirens turned into a discordant wail of panic.
The helicopter's spotlight lagged, then found him again.
And when it did, the broadcast caught the moment that changed the story's tone across the whole country:
The BMW didn't just look fast.
It looked unreal.
Smoke streamed from its hood in ghostly ribbons. One headlight was dead, the other flickered, casting a crooked beam that made the car look like it was squinting through pain. Sparks still spat from a scraped side panel every time the chassis flexed.
It should've looked broken.
Instead it looked possessed—a wounded thing refusing to die, dragging the night behind it like a cape.
People stopped calling it a car in their minds.
They started calling it something else.
A phantom.
A curse.
A story the city had accidentally summoned.
Jacob felt himself drifting into that too, and that was the most personal horror of all: the further he pushed, the less he felt like Jacob Cooper. The more he became the helmet, the wheel, the engine note.
Wanted.
A word the world said like it was a spell.
The system's HUD flickered again, a cold whisper over the violence:
Pursuit Breaker Opportunity: STRUCTURE
CONFIRMED: COLLAPSE PATH AVAILABLE
REWARD: HIGH
Jacob didn't think of reward.
He thought of the gun in his face.
He thought of the head-on impact.
He thought of how the cops had circled him like prey.
He thought, with raw clarity: If I stop, they kill me.
So he took the city's architecture and turned it into a lie.
He drove straight through a construction zone where scaffolding kissed the road's edge—metal frames and temporary supports holding up an unfinished overhang like a skeleton waiting for flesh. He clipped one support with the BMW's shoulder.
Not enough to collapse it instantly.
Enough to start a chain reaction.
Poles shuddered. Bolts screamed. The structure groaned like an old ship in a storm. Behind him, the first pursuing cruiser didn't have time to understand what was happening—only time to brake and watch the world above it begin to fall.
The overhang gave way in a grinding roar.
Concrete dust erupted. Steel snapped. A cascade of debris collapsed across the lane behind Jacob, swallowing headlights in a choking gray cloud and forcing the police to scatter.
The helicopter spotlight caught the dust plume blooming upward like a mushroom of pale smoke.
The broadcast went mad.
"Oh my—he just—he just brought part of the structure down—police units are stopping—this is—this is—"
In Dom's house, Mia made a small, broken sound.
Dom stood up.
Not quickly. Not theatrically.
Like a man rising from a table when the conversation stopped being about racing and started being about survival.
Letty's voice was tight. "He's going to get people killed."
Dom didn't answer.
His eyes stayed on the TV, on the blue-and-silver shape streaking out of the dust cloud like it had been born from it.
Because the worst part was clear now, even to him:
The city wasn't just watching a chase.
The city was watching a transformation.
The myth was shedding its last human softness.
Jacob burst onto a broader boulevard where glass-fronted buildings reflected the strobing lights like broken mirrors. He clipped a low concrete planter, sending it exploding into chunks. He smashed through a chain-link gate that should've stopped him, metal tearing and whipping back like it was trying to grab him.
Every impact should've slowed him.
Instead, each one seemed to peel another layer off reality, as if the car and the man inside it were slipping out of the world's grip.
Police regrouped ahead—more units trying to seal an intersection.
Jacob didn't thread it.
He took it.
He hammered the BMW's front end into the side of a cruiser that had angled too far into his lane, a brutal shoulder-check of metal on metal that shoved the heavier car sideways, tires screaming, front end bouncing off the curb.
The sound hit the microphones like a gunshot made of steel.
Civilians scattered. Pedestrians ran. The city's panic became physical.
And above it all, the helicopter followed, spotlight trembling as the pilot fought to keep the ghost in frame.
Because now it wasn't just about catching him.
It was about witnessing him.
Jacob didn't feel human anymore.
He felt like a wound moving through the night.
A streak of blue and silver, smoke and sparks, pain and fury, refusing to end.
And somewhere deep beneath the helmet, beneath the adrenaline and the system's hungry numbers, a small part of him screamed—not in rage, but in grief:
This isn't what I wanted.
But the city didn't care what he wanted.
The city wanted the myth.
So the myth kept driving—harder, faster, more impossible—until even the people watching couldn't decide whether they were seeing a car…
…or something more ethereal wearing a car like a body.